Humans could stay on the Moon for lengthy periods during this decade, a Nasa official has said.
Howard Hu, who leads the Orion lunar spacecraft programme for the agency, said habitats would be needed to support scientific missions.
Orion is currently about 134,000km (83,300 miles) from the Moon.
The 100m-tall Artemis rocket blasted off from the Kennedy Space Center as part of Nasa's mission to take astronauts back to Earth's satellite.
Sitting atop the rocket is the Orion spacecraft which, for this first mission, is uncrewed but is equipped with a 'manikin' which will register the impacts of the flight on the human body.
Wednesday's flight followed two previous launch attempts in August and September that were aborted during the countdown because of technical woes.
